Nokia 808 PureView: Monster Camera Smartphone Faces Tough Competition

Will the Nokia 808 PureView have an edge over other smartphones because of its 41MP camera sensor?

The Nokia 808 PureView has been unveiled at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2012 event in Barcelona. It comes with AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 640 x 360 pixels. It includes Corning Gorilla glass and Nokia ClearBlack display that adds a reflection-blocking polariser layer thereby blocking incoming light reflections and provides better performance even under sunlight.

The PureView runs on Nokia Belle Feature Pack 1 operating system that features improved performance, faster web browsing, 20 new widgets and six customisable home screens. In addition, it offers support for Dolby headphone technology which ensures remarkable surround sound experience.

The smartphone comes with a 41 megapixel camera sensor with Nokia Pureview Pro imaging technology and Carl Zeiss optics. It supports three shooting modes - auto, scenes and creative. With superior low-light performance, the device has the ability which enables one to capture the professional looking photos during any condition. It offers support to full HD video recording of 1080p at 30 frames per second (fps) and offers 4x lossless zoom. "It's the world's first device to include Rich Recording," claims Nokia.

It sports a Xenon flash and LED video light which allow you to take good photos even under low-light conditions. The smartphone is expected to arrive in mid-to-late July in the UK, according to Unwired View. It is available for pre-order on Clove, which is priced at £504.

According to Smartphone Biz-News, the Finnish manufacturer is planning for a complete range of PureView smartphones with different designs and prices. Interestingly, future smartphones could possess high-resolution image sensors incorporating into a more flexible housing. The Nokia 808PureView has been awarded the "Best New Mobile Handset, Device or Tablet," at the MWC event.

Let's check out the tough competitors to Nokia 808 PureView:

Apple's iPhone 4S

The iPhone 4S has turned out to be an amazing device that was released in October 2011. The company's best-seller runs on Apple's iOS 5 which could be upgraded to iOS 5.1 OS. It touts Retina display with LED-backlit IPS TFT capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 960 x 640 pixels at 326ppi.

Siri has been its biggest selling point, and the enhanced camera functionality adds to it. It features an eight megapixel iSight camera that offers auto-focus, LED flash and face detection. The tech giant has taken the plunge to provide a better camera than the iPhone 4. The iPhone 4S camera allows you to record HD video of 1080p at 30 fps.

It comes with new optics that offers good photography, which enables the custom lens in making the images look sharper. It uses improved algorithms in iOS 5 to provide better colour accuracy, white balance and greater dynamic range. It facilitates users to edit the photos while on the go with the tools like cropping, enhancement, removal of red-eye and rotate.

Samsung Galaxy S2

Samsung's Galaxy S2 touts a 4.3in Super AMOLED Plus capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 800 x 480 pixels. The device, powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU and an Exynos chipset runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread OS. It could be upgraded to Android 4.0 ICS. It features an eight megapixel camera with LED flash along with the full HD video recording capabilities of 1080p. The sporting features are auto-focus, geo-tagging, face and smile detection, touch focus and image stabilisation.

Sony Xperia S

Sony Xperia S was unveiled at the Consumer Electronic Show (CES), at Las Vegas. It comes with a 4.3in scratch-resistant TFT touchscreen with a pretty good resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. It includes a Reality display with Sony mobile Bravia engine and Timescape UI. The Bravia engine improves sharpness, increases contrast, saturation and noise reduction of the photos and videos. It packs a rear-facing camera of 12.1 megapixel with auto-focus, LED flash and 16x digital zoom. It allows users to capture video of 1080p at 30fps. Apart from tech specs, it includes Exmor R, a CMOS sensor that aims to take exceptional photos even by candlelight.

Samsung Galaxy S3

The Galaxy S3, unveiled on 3 May, will be officially released on 30 May in the UK. It includes an extremely large screen of 4.8in Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen with a resolution of 1280 x 720 pixels. It is powered by the quad-core Exynos 4212 processor. The new smartphone comes with an eight megapixel rear-facing camera with auto-focus, LED flash, geo-tagging, face and smile detection, image stabilisation and more. It will automatically capture a burst of eight making a continuous scene and will select the best photo.